Why did the 18-second video go so viral? Partly because someone on Twitter – not the person who recorded the video – added a caption indicating that the man was placed on a no-fly list because he was part of the uprising at the American Capitol.
“People who broke into the Capitol on Wednesday are now learning that they’re on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation.
said in the caption.
Facts first: The Twitter caption was inaccurate: the airport incident was not about the Capitol uprising. The man in the video was rather asked to board a Charlotte-to-Denver flight because he refused to comply with American Airlines’ mandatory mask policy, airline spokesman Curtis Blessing told CNN.
“On Friday, January 8, a customer was asked to depart flight 1754 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) for refusing to comply with our mandatory face coverage policy. The customer complied with the requests to depart, and the flight departs at 7:42 a.m. EST for Denver International Airport (DEN), ‘Blessing said in an email.
After the mask incident, Blessing said, the man was placed on American Airlines’ own denial list, essentially a non-flight list specific to the one airline, pending further investigation. But there is no basis for the suggestion that he was ever on a list of government aircraft – in which case it would have been highly unlikely that he would have been able to get on a plane at all – or for any reason banned from flying linked to the Capitol uprising.
The video was originally posted on the social media app TikTok by Tania Domínguez, who told CNN that she is at Charlotte Airport waiting for another flight. Her own caption said: “Homeboy had a complete collapse of the toddler, he was told to wear a mask.” (She later said in the TikTok comment thread to her video that she was not sure the incident was about masks. But her initial instinct was correct.)
The video shows the man with a face walking over his chin in the terminal, rather than over his nose and mouth. He sounded emotional as he screamed because he had been kicked out of a plane and presumably victimized by unnamed people, who he said wanted to ruin his life.
CNN could not contact the man whose name was not released.
After CNN reported on Twitter on Tuesday that the @RayRedacted tweet incorrectly suggested that the incident was about the Capitol uprising, @RayRedacted tweeted
correction and said, ‘Initially, I was given the wrong information.’ As of 3:50 p.m., Tuesday, the correction tweet had 20 retweets – compared to more than 107,000 retweets on the inaccurate initial tweet, which remained online.
Not the only one
This Charlotte video was not the only airport video that went viral with a fake caption following the Capitol uprising. Videos of an arrest at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, for example, have been widely shared with labels claiming to be linked to the uprising and a “#NoFlyList” – but as the Tampa Bay Times has pointed out, is the videos were actually filmed two months ago.
Congress Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, called for participants in the Capitol Uprising to be placed on the list of government flyers. But it is unclear what, if any, steps will be taken. The office of Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Home Security, a Democratic Mississippi that last week called on the FBI and the Transport Security Administration to add all identified Capitol rioters to the federal list of aircraft, said Monday that it no notice received agencies did so.
TSA said in a statement on Monday that it was “on high alert” following the Capitol incident and “travelers will notice additional law enforcement and dog presence at the three airports in Washington, DC.”
CNN’s Pete Muntean contributed to this article.
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